The sit-down area is spacious and clean, with just chairs and a condiment stand. The food is prepared behind a large glass panel, so I could see the cook skillfully spreading the batter in two semicircular sweeps on a large round griddle with a cracked egg on top.

Overall, the concept of World Cuisine Night was a good one — paying $10 or one meal swipe for access to every dining hall is an amazing deal, and the idea of traveling the world across campus eateries was fun to get into. However, the execution was pretty poor. Very few stops were the least bit satisfying — it really brought out the worst in dining hall food. With adequate preparation and superb execution, though, I think that another World Cuisine Night could be a big success.

Chinese kids didn’t celebrate Halloween when I grew up (most of them still don’t), so God realized we needed some other excuse to eat candy. My frugal parents, and their parents before them, saved all their candy boxes to store sewing supplies, ensuring that the memories associated with those candies would last many generations.

Asya started off with a demonstration of the most common ingredients in South India. She remarked how even though South Indian restaurants are a rare sight in this area, it was still possible to capture the essence of the cuisine through home cooking.

The idea to subscribe to a meal delivery service did not dawn on me until one night when I was browsing the New York Times Cooking website one Saturday in early September. I came across this Spring Ramen Bowl with snap peas and asparagus recipe, and was excited for a moment — until I opened my kitchen pantry to find there was nothing but ramen. No snap peas, no asparagus, no ginger and no lemons.